Inside Ernest Hemingway's Key West Home and How It Inspired Many of His Famous Writings

Table Of Content

• Florida Historical Society
• Experience Paradise: Kimpton Winslow’s Bungalows in Key West
• Eight Cat Paradises, Where the Felines Come First
• House and museum in Key west, Florida / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
• Catlas Obscura
• Inside Ernest Hemingway's Key West Home and How It Inspired Many of His Famous Writings

The Hemingway house in Key West was a gift to Ernest Hemingway and his wife Pauline from the latter’s well off uncle. Originally the Key West house was built in 1851 from rock and in Spanish Colonial style. But in 1931 when the Hemingways received it the house was in massive need of restoration. So they made an overhaul to get the Key West home to the state and National Historic Landmark it is today.

Florida Historical Society

While much of his later writing was published posthumously, they were finished without his supervision, unlike the works listed below. The dignity of movement of an ice-berg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water. A writer who omits things because he does not know them only makes hollow places in his writing. Hemingway had a six toed cat, and many of the cats on the property alsohave six toes. Ernest loved cats and always had many of them around his various homes.

Experience Paradise: Kimpton Winslow’s Bungalows in Key West

Before that, homes in the Florida Keys all collected rainwater incisterns. Hemingway was reportedly so angered by the pool’s tremendous cost that he pressed a cent into the concrete during its construction, exclaiming, “You might as well have my last penny! Hemingway’s second wife, Pauline, had her chandelier collection shipped from Paris to Key West when she and Hemingway bought the house. Her glass and porcelain fixtures replaced all of the home’s original ceiling fans. The eighteenth century walnut dining table and eclectic sculptures were carefully maintained by the family. Writer John Dos Passos suggested to Hemingway that he might enjoy Key West, Florida, and in March 1928, Hemingway visited the island for the first time.

Eight Cat Paradises, Where the Felines Come First

Ernest likes to stay in his writing workroom where he wrote some of his best work. Bee Bennett Mansion, CA (The spirit of Molly Bennett while alive never got over the tremendous loss of her children, and remains the spectral hostess). Whaley House, CA (The spirit of Whaley daughter Violet is still very upset, but is comforted by her spectral parents in the family forever home). Old Allen House, AR (The spirit of LaDell stays in her Family’s home, finding peace in the company of her spectral family members). Visitors can enjoy looking at not only the family furniture and treasures, but also read print of articles, and memorabilia exhibits on the first and second floor.

The Hemingway Home & Museum is home to approximately 50 polydactyl, or six-toed, cats, which are descendants of Hemingway’s original cat, Snow White. The Ernest Hemingway Home and Museum in Key West is a national historic landmark where one can explore the life and work of the famous author. This section guides you through tours, operating hours, ticket details, shopping options, and events including weddings.

The 26 Best Things To Do In Key West - Southern Living

The 26 Best Things To Do In Key West.

Posted: Wed, 29 Nov 2023 08:00:00 GMT [source]

Catlas Obscura

After his 1939 divorce, Ernest lived in Cuba with his new wife, Martha Gellhorn, while Pauline and the boys lived in the Key West home. Asa was a talented marine architect and very successful salvage wrecker, who was one of Florida’s wealthiest men when he built this this lovely, Spanish Colonial style two story villa, using coral rock quarried on its property. Asa added his own architectural touches, such as the New Orleans wrought-iron porch railings, balcony supports and Italian marble fireplaces. In the late summer that year we lived in a house in a village that looked across the river and the plain to the mountains.

The house was given to him by the uncle of his second wife; at the time, Hemingway probably could not have afforded to purchase it himself. Because the car had been delayed in transit, the Ford dealership insisted that they take up residence in an apartment located above the showroom on Simonton Street. Ernest and Pauline accepted the offer, and he resumed work on a war story he had started on the ocean passage to Key West. Hemingway continued his Paris habits of writing during the early mornings, and taking time to explore his surroundings in the afternoons. The Hemingways spent three weeks waiting for their car, and it was during this very brief three-week interlude that Ernest—amazingly—finished the partially autobiographical novel about the First World War, A Farewell To Arms.

Inside Ernest Hemingway's Key West Home and How It Inspired Many of His Famous Writings

Upon his arrival in Key West in April 1928, the first order of business was to locate the new Ford Roadster that Pauline Hemingway’s wealthy Uncle Gus had so generously purchased for the newlywed couple. Hemingway continued to travel throughout the 1930s for both work and pleasure. A two-month African safari in 1933 left him dangerously ill but provided both the inspiration for his famed short story “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” and trunks full of animal trophies, put on display in Key West. When Hemingway left to report on the Spanish Civil War in 1937, Pfeiffer decided to surprise him by building a pool, the first to be built on Key West. Hemingway, however, seemed less than pleased by the gesture — furious over the cost (more than $340,000 in today’s money), he threw a penny into the unfinished pool, noting that Pfeiffer might as well have taken his last cent.

Accordingly, in 1938, pool construction involved drilling down to the salt-water table and installing a water pump to retrieve salt water to fill the pool. Ernest Hemingway was married four times, and each of his wives influenced his writing. Regardless of the legend behind the pool, it was an architectural feat in 1937.

Pfeiffer would remain in the Key West home until her death in 1951, and the house would later be sold by the Hemingway sons after their father’s death. As he had been in Key West, Hemingway seemed inspired by his new surroundings, writing works such as For Whom the Bell Tolls and The Old Man and the Sea, and receiving the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954. Hemingway helped make Key West famous, and he and the city became almost impossibly intertwined during his years there. He immortalized his favorite haunts and drinking buddies through his writing, most famously in 1937’s To Have and Have Not, a Key West-set novel inspired by a group of local black-market smugglers. His hard-partying ways even came home with him, quite literally, in the form of a urinal, drunkenly carried home from Sloppy Joe’s Bar and installed in his backyard, which is still working as a water fountain today.

Many of the unique furnishings are European antiques collected during their stay on the continent. The trophy mounts and skins were souvenirs of the Hemingways’ African safaris and numerous hunting expeditions in the American west. Ernest’s presence can still be felt in his studio where he produced some of his most well-known works.

The house is filled with artifacts from Hemingway’s life, including old photographs, letters, books, furniture, and even the typewriter he used to write some of his most famous works. The Ernest Hemingway House was the residence of American writer Ernest Hemingway in the 1930s. It is at 907 Whitehead Street, across from the Key West Lighthouse, close to the southern coast of the island.

Miami to Key West: An Easy Day trip to the Florida Keys - solosophie

Miami to Key West: An Easy Day trip to the Florida Keys.

Posted: Tue, 05 Mar 2024 08:00:00 GMT [source]

The home was in disrepair when the Hemingways took ownership, but both Ernest and Pauline could see beyond the rubble and ruin and appreciated the grand architecture and stateliness of the home. Constructed from native rock, the house was built in the Spanish Colonial style in 1851. The massive restoration and remodeling they undertook in the early 1930s turned the home into the National Historical Landmark that thousands of tourists visit and enjoy today. And Ernest did complain mightily about the growing expenses of construction costs. ” Whether the story is apocryphal or not, there is a penny embedded in cement at the north end of the pool to memorialize Ernest’s purported outburst. Several years earlier, he’d met journalist Martha Gellhorn while she was vacationing in Key West.

To construct the first in-ground pool in Key West, solid coral had to be excavated with picks and sledgehammers. The only pool within 100 miles, it measured 24 feet by 60 feet and was filled with 80,000+ gallons of salt water which had to be drilled because there was no running water (at the time). Jerry Joyce has been a Florida resident since 1988 and has lived in a variety of places in the South Florida area.

The two-story house was built in 1851 of native limestone in a Spanish colonial style by noted marine salvager Asa Tift. Pfeiffer’s wealthy uncle bought the then-derelict house as a wedding present for her and Hemingway in 1931, and the couple had the entire interior restored. The second story of the coach house in the back was made into a writing studio for Hemingway. The swimming pool, built in 1938 as a present from Pfeiffer to her husband, was the first residential swimming pool built in Key West. The coach house became a pool house, and Hemingway had walls built around the grounds. He also installed a catwalk that allowed him to walk from the bedroom to his studio in the pool house.

Pfeiffer, well acquainted with her husband’s often unstable moods, calmly had the penny embedded in concrete, forever immortalizing his outburst. It remained vacant for the next 10 years, until Hemingway’s death, after which his heirs sold it. The new owners, who had planned to live in the house, found that most of the furnishings and other memorabilia remained there, and they opened it as a museum in 1964. The Ernest Hemingway House was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1958. It is packed with Hemingway memorabilia—his typewriter, photos, and animal skins. In addition, the house and grounds are occupied by dozens of six-toed cats that are said to be descended from a cat that Hemingway owned.